1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer program product, system, and method for communicating health status when a management console is unavailable for a server in a mirror storage environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a storage environment, primary and secondary storage servers may maintain mirror copy relationships, where a primary volume in a mirror copy relationship comprises the storage or volumes from which data is physically copied to a secondary volume. A server and storage involved in the mirror copy relationships may be implemented in a storage system, such as the International Business Machine Corporation's (“IBM”) DS8000®, which also includes a hardware management console (HMC) that is a dedicated workstation physically located inside the DS8000 storage system. The HMC may proactively monitor the state of the storage system and notify an administrator or a remote monitoring service when service and repairs are required. The storage system may further include multiple server components, or storage facility Central Electronic Complexes (CECs), and disk enclosures for disk drives implementing the storage. When the storage systems, such as the DS8000s, are deployed in a mirror storage environment, the data may be mirrored among the storages implemented in the storage system, which connect over a network.
In certain implementations, the HMC may connect to the CECs or processing complexes over a dedicated network, which is separate from the network used to mirror data between the storage systems.
There is a need in the art for improved techniques for monitoring and reporting the health status in a mirror copying relationship.